Re: [OpenBabel-scripting] Ruby-Open Babel not Still Not Working (detailed)

[Geoffrey H. <ge...@ge...>]

On Oct 14, 2006, at 4:47 PM, richard apodaca wrote:

> (3) edit openbabel.i: comment out line 27 (Swig can't
> find std_list.i for Ruby - it works for Python,
> though). Change line 5 to %module openbabel_wrap
> (don't want to risk a collision w/ installed openbabel
> library)

Seems like it might soon be a good idea to have different openbabel.i  
files for the different scripting modules. The SVN version (for  
2.1.0bX) has the std_list.i #ifdef'ed out automatically.

> This generates lots of warnings that don't appear when
> the argument is -python instead of -ruby (maybe this
> is the problem):

Nah. I get these for Perl and Python too. The problem is that C++ has  
different naming restrictions than scripting languages. So some  
functions may not be available until remapped. Not a problem for core  
functionality, as far as I've seen.

> (8) save the following as "extconf.rb":
> require 'mkmf'
>
> dir_config('openbabel')
> dir_config('openbabel-2.0')
> have_library('openbabel')
>
> create_makefile('openbabel_wrap')

One bit which might be good is to have a path to the libopenbabel  
too. On my system it was looking in the normal search path, which may  
or may not work for everyone (e.g., with a custom --prefix call to  
the Open Babel configure script.)

> (9) create the makefile:
>
> ruby extconf.rb
> --with-openbabel-include='/usr/local/include/openbabel-2.0/openbabel'
> --with-openbabel-2.0-include='/usr/local/include/openbabel-2.0'

Ideally could this be something that could go into the scripts/ 
Makefile.am as a shell script? The Makefiles should have the correct  
paths already.

> (13) require 'openbabel_wrap'
> irb(main):001:0> require 'openbabel_wrap'

Here (on OS X, Ruby 1.8.4), I get:

irb(main):001:0> require 'openbabel_wrap'
=> true

Not quite sure of enough ruby (or the binding) to try anything else  
yet... Maybe you should try this on the SVN version? I'd obviously  
like to get a ruby module into 2.1.0 anyway.

Cheers,
-Geoff